Woman elderly's protector and friend

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When I arrive at the skilled nursing facility on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, Lee Ann Orme is already there. She is going in unannounced, she has told me.

She will be looking for odors, those bad smells that just tell you something is wrong. Is there a bug of some type in a corner? Mostly, though, she will simply check on the welfare of the facility's 100 or so residents.

Orme is an ombudsman with the Council on Aging Orange County, one of about 70 men and women who every week enter every skilled nursing facility, assisted living complex and board and care home in the county to make sure the rights of the roughly 128,000 long-term care residents in them are protected.

If a resident has a problem or concern, the ombudsman, as mandated by state and federal law, mediates and attempts to resolve it. The ombudsman investigates allegations of abuse and neglect, and reports serious facility violations to state licensing agencies.

What I found after spending hours with Lee Ann Orme is that she is mostly the residents' friend, a person who comes to visit with them when no one else, including their own family, will.

She spends at least 15 hours a week visiting the nine facilities the council has assigned her, and is one of the few ombudsmen who receive a stipend to do it. It barely covers her gas, she says. Most of the 70 are volunteers.

Orme, 59, holds a master's degree in psychology and is in the process of getting the experience and credentials to open her own practice. Yet that has nothing to do with her basically volunteering as an ombudsman.

No, it goes back nine years ago, when her mother was gravely ill, she said. She had no clue about meeting her mother's medical needs. There was so much she didn't know. Ultimately, she had to put her mother in an assisted living facility, where she died five weeks later.

“I felt I learned a lot,” Orme said as we stood on the sidewalk on Harbor Boulevard. “There were things I could have done better for my mother, and I wanted the opportunity to use what I learned for others. I kind of wanted to make it up as best I could to atone for my errors.”

She became an ombudsman.

“This one is 100 beds,” she tells me just before we walk in. The goal is to make a difference in the lives of those inside, she adds, most of whom have no family or friends and are alone in this life.

The minute we walk through the front door, Orme is greeted loudly and warmly by an elderly gentleman seated in a wheelchair. She walks over and hugs him.

They chat for a long while, trading stories. Finally, she takes him by both hands and asks if there is anything she can do for him today. He shakes his head and just smiles, patting her on the shoulder, overjoyed by the attention Orme has heaped upon him on this morning.

“We need more ombudsmen,” Orme says as we make our way up a hallway.

To become a certified ombudsman, the candidate has to undergo 36 hours of training, and 10 hours of instruction with a mentor, Orme says.

“I absolutely believe I am making a difference,” Orme says. “There are times you think not, but mostly you are helping get people where they need to be.”

Nurses and administrators alike hug or backslap her. All that I can think is how necessary this place is, with its army of nurses and the care they so obviously genuinely give, and how I hope being in a place like this is never in my future.

“I feel a close kinship with older people, I guess,” Orme says when we are in her car, headed to a facility in Fullerton, and after I asked about the reception she received.

“My whole life, I connected better with older people than younger people. The connection always came easy. I'm not sure why. Being with them is a place where I feel at home.”

The Fullerton assisted living facility, to me, is your basic elderly living nightmare. It resembles an old and cheap motel from a low-budget slasher flick. Residents there are almost all poor.

Inside, the staff is quite friendly, and the residents all know Orme, and greet her as the others in Anaheim had. On the way over, Orme had warned me the place had bed bugs. Standing there, I figured that had to be the least of it.

An elderly gentleman races up to inform Orme someone had had an accident in the bathroom – and he did not use the term “had an accident.” Orme informs an aide of the situation and makes her rounds. I want to flee or throw up as I wait. We get out of there just in time.

“We are watchdogs, not enforcement agents,” Orme tells me as we head to the other side of Fullerton to an assisted living facility she promises will be much nicer. There have been battles with the owner of the last place, she said.

“We try to resolve problems right away, but sometimes they are beyond our scope, so we have to get the state and county agencies involved.”

Next I was in heaven.

The second Fullerton facility is but 5 years old, a wood-paneled, granite-covered, big-screen filled paradise. It costs between $3,000 and $5,000 a month to live there. The door to each room bears an engraved nameplate of the resident. Soft music plays in the background.

Everyone knows Lee Ann Orme. The director of the place chats pleasantly with her for long minutes. Yes, I could even envision myself living here.

“This was the first facility they gave me when I started out as an ombudsman,” Lee Ann Orme says as we head out. “I've fought to hang onto it.”

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